¹ For example, see De Roover, Jakob, Claerhout, Sarah, and Balagangadhara, S. N., “Liberal Political Theory and the Cultural Migration of Ideas: The Case of Secularism in India,” Political Theory 39, no. 5 (2011): 571–99Google Scholar; Farah Godrej, Cosmopolitan Political Thought: Method, Practice, and Discipline (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Jenco, Leigh, “‘What Does Heaven Ever Say?’ A Methods-Centered Approach to Cross-Cultural Engagement,” American Political Science Review 101, no. 4 (2007): 741–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jenco, , “How Meaning Moves: Tan Sitong on Borrowing Across Cultures,” Philosophy East and West 62, no. 1 (2012): 92–113Google Scholar; Thomas, Megan, “Orientalism and Comparative Political Theory,” Review of Politics 72, no. 4 (2010): 653–77Google Scholar. A central reason I focus on (orally transmitted) texts in this essay is because they provide the largest amount of evidence for examining pre-Classical Indian political thought.

² If not qualified properly a “premodern/modern” binary can also introduce potentially problematic, oversimplified cross-cultural assumptions. Sudipta Kaviraj, in arguing for a revisionist theory of modernity, has explained how a certain understanding of “premodernity” arises along with a particular theory of modernization that begins in Europe, which is then imposed on other geographic and cultural spaces to define them within a framework predicated on colonialist power relations. See Kaviraj, , “An Outline of a Revisionist Theory of History,” European Journal of Sociology 46, no. 3 (2005): 497–526Google Scholar. In using the term “premodern” in this essay (omitting the quotation marks hereafter), I intend neither to oversimplify and deny the historicity of modernity as a concept and phenomenon, nor to claim it as a homogenous and universalizing category that serves as a code word for some type of cultural backwardness. For the purposes of my argument, I use it in a more general sense to clarify broad chronological distinctions across long periods of time. Although the critical-revivalist type of position that I will defend attends to premodern sources, in another sense my project could be seen as “a continuation of the spirit of modernity” and attempt to facilitate new, plural modernities through critical reflexivity and improvisation. See Kaviraj, “An Outline,” 521–24.

³ It should be noted at the outset how any simplistic distinctions of “native vs. Western” or “self vs. other” are not as transparent as they may initially sound, and I do not wish to rely on an oversimplified assumption of civilizational difference. As Andrew Sartori has explained in the case of India, the idea of culture itself is a modern, Western formulation that is imbricated in modern liberalism and capitalism. Explaining how global capitalism shaped nineteenth- and twentieth-century Bengal's embrace of “culturalism,” he provides one potential explanation as to why a particular mode of Vedic revivalism made sense in historical and political context. That is, a return to premodern texts might reflect attempts to locate a “native culture” in an idealized past, partly in response to socioeconomic alienation stemming from colonialism, the spread of capitalist marketization, and laissez-faire economics in many parts of modern India. I thank an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this point. See Sartori, Bengal in Global Concept History: Culturalism in the Age of Capital (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

⁴ Williams, Melissa S. and Warren, Mark E., “A Democratic Case for Comparative Political Theory,” Political Theory 42, no. 1 (2014): 26–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Ibid., 31, citing David Held in Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture, ed. David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt, and Jonathan Perraton (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 81; Held, Models of Democracy, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2006), 309.

⁶ “First, it can give us the sort of critical distance that supports reflective judgment within our own societies (knowing ourselves through knowing the other). Second, to the extent that it renders their thought intelligible to us in a form that is recognizably valid for them, the practice of comparative political theory contributes to the social conditions of possibility for the emergence of intercultural collective subjects of practical reason—that is, intercultural publics” (Williams and Warren, “A Democratic Case,” 36).

⁷ Bhargava, Rajeev, “Overcoming the Epistemic Injustice of Colonialism,” Global Policy 4, no. 4 (2013): 413–17Google Scholar. He defines epistemic injustice “as a form of cultural injustice that occurs when the concepts and categories by which a people understand themselves and their world are replaced or adversely affected by the concepts and categories of the colonizers” (413); McGhee, Michael, “Learning to Converse: Reflections on a Small Experiment,” Philosophy East and West 63, no. 4 (2013): 530–42Google Scholar.

⁸ Some points of clarification are necessary regarding my usage of “politics,” “the political,” and “rajanical” in this essay. Scholars working in cross-cultural and comparative political theory often use the term “political” or designation “the political” in a broader, less specific sense rather than a narrower, more specific one. Following this custom and for the purposes of this essay's argument, I employ the term “politics” in a broader sense, which, following Raymond Geuss, one might take as “any human activity of structuring or directing or coordinating the actions of a group.” For a helpful distinction between this broader understanding and narrower forms, see Raymond Geuss, A World without Why (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 146–50. In the second section of the essay I explain how an Indian rajanical tradition, while “political” in a broad sense, nevertheless constitutes a culturally distinctive understanding of rule that is not captured in most specific and predominant Western conceptions of politics, such as Weberian, Arendtian, or Schmittian formulations. In turn, I believe this justifies the usage of “rajanical” as a distinct category, as it specifies an important cluster of Indian ideas and beliefs that also tend to fall outside democratic and liberal frameworks.

⁹ Singh, Aakash, “Deparochializing the Global Justice Debate, Starting with Indian Political Theory,” Global Policy 4, no. 4 (2013): 418–19Google Scholar.

¹⁰ For an example of such a position, see Guha, Ramachandra, “Arguments with Sen,” Economic and Political Weekly 40, no. 41 (2005): 4420–25Google Scholar, who provides a critical review of Amartya Sen's appeal to the past in Sen's The Argumentative Indian (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005). For Sen's response to such skeptical-rejectionist positions, see Sen, “The Politics of History,” in Pluralism and Democracy in India: Debating the Hindu Right, ed. Wendy Doniger and Martha C. Nussbaum (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 21–34. In the wake of Edward Said's highly influential book Orientalism, Wendy Doniger astutely explains the logic behind many rejectionist positions and Orientalist indictments, and how a sense of guilt fuels an anti-Orientalism that has led to the unfortunate neglect of ancient texts: “[Said's Orientalism] taught us about the collusion between academic knowledge and political power… . But the sense of guilt that the excavation of the imperialist subtext has generated has taken a terrible toll on the study of the text itself. Anti-Orientalism has led in many quarters to a disregard for the philology and basic textual work that the Orientalists did very well and that still remains the basis for sound scholarship about Hinduism” (Doniger, On Hinduism [New York: Oxford University Press, 2014], 563, 564).

¹¹ Conservative religious and nationalist groups such as the Arya Samaj and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) frequently appeal to the Vedas for inspiration. For example, the founder of Arya Samaj, Swami Dayananda, used the Vedas as spiritual justification for the supremacy of Hindu culture in order to underpin a neo-Hindu nationalism and monolithic Indian cultural renewal. This move further entailed the exclusion of other religious traditions' truth claims and contributions to Indian political culture.

¹² This formulation of the point is indebted to arguments advanced by Raymond Geuss, Politics and the Imagination (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). This claim is not meant to imply that all or even most Vedic ideas are necessarily valuable for theory building or practical reasons, and I do not argue that contemporary Indian politics should turn to a Vedic conception of rule in its entirety. For arguments that scholars must remain critical of various Vedic and Hindu ideas and not overly romanticize them, see Laurie Patton, “Nature Romanticism and Sacrifice in Ṛgvedic Interpretation,” and Lance Nelson, “Reading the Bhagavad Gita from an Ecological Perspective,” in Hinduism and Ecology, ed. Christopher Key Chapple and Mary Evelyn Tucker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). For essays explaining how a variety of premodern Indian traditions express ideas that may help address contemporary environmental issues, see Chapple and Tucker, eds., Hinduism and Ecology. I thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting greater clarity on these points.

¹³ For a discussion of Hindutva ideology and the political stakes involved in its interpretations of the historical past, see Sumit Sarkar, “Hindutva and History,” in Beyond Nationalist Frames: Postmodernism, Hindu Fundamentalism, History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 244–62.

¹⁴ On the need for such middle ground, which could provide means for creating a more inclusive public culture in India and for helping to defuse political polarization in Hindu communities, see Gurcharan Das, “The Dilemma of a Liberal Hindu,” in Pluralism and Democracy in India, 207–19, and Pratik Kanjilal, “The Baby and the Bathwater: Secularism in the Work of a Conservative Writer,” ibid., 233–42.

¹⁵ Parekh, Bhikhu, “The Poverty of Indian Political Theory,” History of Political Thought 13, no. 3 (1992): 535–60Google Scholar. For a critical response to this assessment, see Aakash Singh and Silika Mohapatra, editors' introduction to Indian Political Thought: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 2010), 3.

¹⁶ Notable exceptions include Parel, Anthony, “Gandhi and the Emergence of the Modern Indian Political Canon,” Review of Politics 70, no. 1 (2008): 40–63Google Scholar, and Sudipta Kaviraj, “On the Historicity of ‘the Political’: Rajaniti and Politics in Modern Indian Thought,” in Comparative Political Thought: Theorizing Practices, ed. Michael Freeden and Andrew Vincent (London: Routledge, 2013), 24–39. My study seeks to further develop Kaviraj's argument for attending closely to vernacular Indian concepts and their longer historical trajectories, particularly those related to the concept of rāj, or rule.

¹⁷ Following Ashis Nandy, a postcolonial fear of being politically “immature” may motivate such concerns. This false presumption of civilizational immaturity could be supported by evolutionary narratives of childhood and adulthood that serve as ideological proxies for colonial ambitions to “civilize” the third world. See Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), chap. 1; “Towards a Third World Utopia,” in Traditions, Tyranny, and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987). Making this move into premodern Indian political thought may also seem troubling owing to the association of India's ancient Vedic tradition with the modern-day caste system. Attentive historical and conceptual engagement, however, need not make the scholar an apologist for the various legal and normative uses to which Vedic ideas have been put. I believe it is a greater danger to shun this ancient past completely, and of greater benefit to understand it to see which aspects of the tradition are worth developing and which aspects are demeaning, unproductive, or superfluous in the current political context. On the connection between the ancient Vedic conception of varṇa and the modern caste system, as well as the significance of caste in contemporary Indian politics in general, see Laura Dudley Jenkins, Identity and Identification in India: Defining the Disadvantaged (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 13; Rochana Bajpai, Debating Difference: Group Rights and Liberal Democracy in India (New York: Oxford, 2011). For important qualifications that highlight British colonialists' role in developing the administrative infrastructure and institutionalization of caste identities and its attendant legal apparatus, see Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Dudley, Identity and Identification.

¹⁸ On the importance of such projects, see Godrej, Cosmopolitan Political Thought, chap. 5.

¹⁹ N. N. Law, Aspects of Ancient Indian Polity (Mumbai: Orient Longmans, 1960 [1921]), 37, see also 10–11. For arguments that deliberative ruling assemblies and some form of “public debate” existed, see A. S. Altekar, State and Government in Ancient India (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1958), 116, 143–44; N. C. Bandyopadhyaya, Development of Hindu Polity and Political Theories (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1980), 60–64; K. P. Jayaswal, Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times (Bangalore: Bangalore Printing and Publishing, 1967), 12–20; Beni Prasad, Theory of Government in Ancient India (Allahabad: Indian Universities Press, Central Book Depot, 1968), 17; R. S. Sharma, Aspects of Political Ideas and Institutions in Ancient India (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1968), 99, 105–6; G. P. Singh, Political Thought in Ancient India: Emergence of the State, Evolution of Kingship, and Inter-State Relations Based on the Saptanga Theory of State (New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 1993), 44; H. N. Sinha, Sovereignty in Ancient Indian Polity: A Study in the Evolution of Early Indian State (London: Luzac, 1938), v; John Spellman, Political Theory of Ancient India: A Study of Kingship from the Earliest Times to Circa A.D. 300 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964), 93–94; V. P. Varma, Studies in Hindu Political Thought and Its Metaphysical Foundations (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1974), 19–20. Contra, see Ian Mabbett, Truth, Myth and Politics in Ancient India (New Delhi: Thomson, 1972), 22–3.

²⁰ For arguments that kings were elected or that there was an element of popular choice and control in early assemblies, at least on occasion, see Altekar, State and Government, 80–81; Bandyopadhyaya, Development of Hindu Polity, 48–51; Charles Drekmeier, Kingship and Community in Early India (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), 19–20, 22; Jayaswal, Hindu Polity, 12, 186–87, 211; Law, Ancient Indian Polity, 10–11; Prasad, Theory of Government, 17; Sharma, Aspects of Political Ideas, 104; Singh, Political Thought in Ancient India, 43–44; Sinha, Sovereignty in Ancient Indian Polity, v; Spellman, Political Theory, 51; Varma, Studies in Hindu Political Thought, 11, 19–20. For statements questioning or qualifying these claims, see Drekmeier, Kingship and Community, 24, 83; Mabbett, Truth, Myth, and Politics, 23–24; Hartmut Scharfe, The State in Indian Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 58; Spellman, Political Theory, 19; Varma, Studies in Hindu Political Thought, 21.

²¹ For example, see Leslie, Margaret, “In Defense of Anachronism,” Political Studies 18, no. 4 (1970): 433–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²² In this section I do not wish to suggest that some alternative, purely secular form of kingship existed in the West, as both ancient and medieval forms of kingship across the globe have entailed mystical or cosmological elements. For example, see Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).

²³ Ṛg-Veda Saṃhitā, ed. Max F. Müller, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1890–1892).

²⁴ Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: An Essay on the Caste System (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 68.

²⁵ That is, what he calls a “magico-religious” model seen in ancient Egyptian and Sumerian kingship.

²⁶ Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus, 68.

²⁷ See ibid., 62–88.

²⁸ For example, see Rajeev Bhargava, “The Distinctiveness of Indian Secularism,” in The Future of Secularism, ed. T. N. Srinivasan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006).

²⁹ On the interdependency of priestly and kingly roles, see also Altekar, State and Government, 52.

³⁰ Theodore Proferes, Vedic Ideals of Sovereignty and the Poetics of Power (New Haven: American Oriental Series, 2007), 76.

³¹ See ibid., chaps. 2 and 3.

³² This is especially important when such vocabulary is employed alongside terms such as “election,” for example: “the election of a king involves transformation of an earthly leader into the sun” (ibid., 91).

³³ For a detailed study of the broad-ranging Vedic cosmologies and their accompanying taxonomic schemas, see Brian K. Smith, Classifying the Universe: The Ancient Indian Varṇa System and the Origins of Caste (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). The vast scope and interconnected nature of Vedic cosmologies are quite unique from a cross-cultural perspective, and I will clarify some of the potential implications of these cosmological beliefs for the rajanical thought that I outline in the next section.

³⁴ Proferes, Vedic Ideals of Sovereignty, 73.

³⁵ Ibid., 101.

³⁶ For example, when Proferes talks about the “free choice” of the clans (ibid., 76), one should ask: what does “free choice” mean? What assumptions about human nature, and potentially incompatible beliefs about a concept such as freedom, are packed into such a belief? These are the sorts of questions that lead back to the categories of Vedic cosmology and ontology, which do not express modern beliefs about freedom grounded in concepts such as autonomy.

³⁷ Arthur Anthony Macdonell and Arthur Berriedale Keith, Vedic Index of Names and Subjects, Vol. 1 and 2 (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1912), 2:426.

³⁸ Pranati Ghosal, Lifestyle of the Vedic People (New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 2006), 62.

³⁹ On this point, see also Spellman, Political Theory, 93, and Varma, Studies in Hindu Political Thought, 11. For examples of those who do not follow this observation and tend to analyze the texts as if they described actual historical circumstances, see Altekar, State and Government, 139–41; Jayaswal, Hindu Polity, 12–20; Prasad, Theory of Government, 17.

⁴⁰ See Christophe Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalism: A Reader (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 31. See also Pandit Ganga Prasad Upadhyaya, The Light of Truth (Satyarth Prakash), trans. Swami Dayananda, 2nd ed. (Allahabad: Ratna Kumari Svadhyaya Samsthana, 1981); Swami Shradananda, Hindu Sangathan: Saviour of the Dying Race (Delhi: Arjun, 1926); V. D. Savarkar, Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu? (New Delhi: Bharatiya Sahitya Sadan, 1923, repr. 1989).

⁴¹ Mabbett, Truth, Myth, and Politics, 22–23.

⁴² Some have noticed and relied upon the increased occurrence of the terms sabhā and samiti in the Atharva-Veda, using this to argue for a democratic element in early Vedic society. For example, see Sharma, Aspects of Political Ideas, 78–108, and Jayaswal, Hindu Polity, 12–20.

⁴³ Atharva-Veda Saṃitā, ed. Vishva Bandhu et al., 5 vols., Vishveshvaranand Indological Series 13–17 (Hoshiarpur: Vishveshvaranand Vedic Research Institute, 1960–64). Translations from the Sanskrit are my own.

⁴⁴ For details about the ritual, see the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, ed. Albrecht Weber, 2nd ed., Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series, no. 96 (Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1964 [1855]), 5.2.3; Pañcaviṃśa Brāhmaṇa (Tāṇḍya Brāhmaṇa), ed. Ānandachandra Vedāntagīśa, 2 vols., Bibliotheca Indica, no. 62 (Kolkata: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1870–74), 18.8–11.

⁴⁵ See J. C. Heesterman, The Ancient Indian Royal Consecration (Gravenhage: Mouton, 1957), 49.

⁴⁶ Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa, ed. A. Mahadeva Sastri (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1911), 1.7.3.

⁴⁷ For example, see Jayaswal, Hindu Polity, 196–97; Sharma, Aspects of Political Ideas, 146–47; Singh, Political Thought in Ancient India, 43–44.

⁴⁸ Heesterman, Royal Consecration, 49.

⁴⁹ I believe these translations are more accurate than “public assembly.”

⁵⁰ Jayaswal, Hindu Polity, 20; Sharma, Aspects of Political Ideas, 78–95.

⁵¹ Maurice Bloomfield, “The Meaning and Etymology of the Vedic Word Vidátha,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 19 (1898): 13.

⁵² Ibid. Bloomfield further explains how the sabhā does not always refer to a communal space, occasionally meaning “house” or “parlor” (ibid., 18).

⁵³ Arthur Anthony Macdonell, A Vedic Reader for Students (LaVergne: Kessinger, 2010 [1917]), 248.

⁵⁴ Bloomfield, “Meaning and Etymology,” 16.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 17. These passages relating to Agni are ṚV 3.1.18, 3.27.7.

⁵⁶ See also Sharma, J. P. and Bailey, H. W., “The Question of the Vidatha in Vedic India,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 1/2 (1965): 43–56Google Scholar. They also argue against the vidatha being interpreted as a political institution.

⁵⁷ Most scholars' analyses of these assemblies extend from the Ṛg-Veda to the Atharva-Veda. A comprehensive list of these scholars would be quite long, but examples include Altekar, State and Government, 140–44; Bandyopadhyaya, Development of Hindu Polity, 58–65; Drekmeier, Kingship and Community, 19–20, 24; Jan Gonda, Ancient Indian Kingship from the Religious Point of View (Leiden: Brill, 1966), 8, 49, 53; Prasad, Theory of Government, 17; Singh, Political Thought in Ancient India, 43–45; Spellman, Political Theory, 92–97; Varma, Studies in Hindu Political Thought, 17–22.

⁵⁸ Jayaswal, Hindu Polity, 20.

⁵⁹ Here, Jayaswal (ibid.) cites ṚV 2.1.4, 3.26.6, 3.38.5 as evidence for these distinctions.

⁶⁰ Jayaswal, Hindu Polity, 12; see AV 3.4.2, 6.87.1, 6.88.3.

⁶¹ It is possible to read the regions and cardinal directions as metaphors for surrounding peoples, such as tribes and clans. However, this reading downplays the fact that the cardinal directions in Vedic thought had their own distinct, ontological existence as entities within the broader cosmology. It is the latter emphasis on a cosmological interpretation, I have argued, that is needed in the political theory literature.

⁶² The “oppressor” (brahmajya) is likely the rājan mentioned in an earlier verse of the same hymn (AV 5.19.6). The relationship referred to here is that between the king (rājan) and brahmin, not the people (viś) and the king, as Jayaswal seems to suggest.

⁶³ Jayaswal, Hindu Polity, 12–16. See also Altekar, State and Government, 107, 143.

⁶⁴ Altekar, State and Government, 81–82.

⁶⁵ Jayaswal claims a “free right of discussion” existed in the samiti without explaining how a system or conception of rights could exist in the first place (Hindu Polity, 14). While he is more restrained in his interpretation of the sabhā, he does not refrain from claiming that, like the samiti, the sabhā included “free discussion” (ibid., 18).

⁶⁶ Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index, 2:211, citing von Richard Pischel and Karl F. Geldner, Vedische Studien, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1889–1901), 2:303.

⁶⁷ I borrow the phrase “web of beliefs” from Mark Bevir, The Logic of the History of Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Jayaswal also claims samitis display popular representation (AV 3.4.2, 6.87.1, 6.88.3), deliberation (AV 2.27, 7.12.1, 12.1.56), and discussion of “state” matters (AV 6.64) (Hindu Polity, 12–16).

⁶⁸ Sharma, Aspects of Political Ideas, 78–92.

⁶⁹ Ibid., 82.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 101.

⁷¹ Ibid.

⁷² Ibid., 82. While the specific subject matter of deliberation may not be discernible in textual evidence, as Sharma explains it is quite clear that a variety of activities are associated with the sabhā. Such activities include what we might consider today to be religious, military, gambling, administrative, and pastoral affairs.

⁷³ Ibid., 99–100. See AV 7.12.3.

⁷⁴ Sharma, Aspects of Political Ideas, 99. Emphasis mine.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 102–3.

⁷⁶ Bandyopadhyaya, Development of Hindu Polity, 53.

⁷⁷ For example, see AV 3.3.1–6 (restoring an exiled king); 3.4.1–7 (prayer at the acceptance of a king); 3.5.1–8 (praise of an amulet derived from the parṇa tree, designed to strengthen royal/kingly power); 4.8.1–7 (prayer at the consecration of a king); 4.22.1–7 (charm to secure the superiority of a king); 6.38.1–4 (prayer for kingly brilliance and power).

⁷⁸ For example, see AV 2.27.1–7 (charm against opponents in debate, undertaken with the pāṭā plant); 3.30.1–7 (charm to secure harmony); 6.64.1–3, 6.73.1–3, 6.74.1–3 (charms to alleviate discord); 7.52.1–2 (charm against disagreement and violence).

⁷⁹ For a study of agonistic elements in Vedic thought, especially as they concern the topic of masculinity, see Jarrod Whitaker, Strong Arms and Drinking Strength: Masculinity, Violence, and the Body in Ancient India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

⁸⁰ For example, see AV 5.18.1–15, 5.19.1–15 (imprecations against oppressors of brahmins) and 11.1.1–37, 12.3.1–60 (the preparation of the brahmaudana, the porridge given as a fee to brahmins).

⁸¹ For a detailed study of these ritual effects, see Brian K. Smith, Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

⁸² Proferes also suggests that ruling entails some type of stewardship. See, e.g., Proferes, Vedic Ideals of Sovereignty, chap. 3.

⁸³ For example, the overtly hierarchical elements of Vedic rule and metaphysics should not be defended or developed, and such aspects of the Vedic-rajanical tradition have been justifiably challenged by liberal-democratic ideas of political and socioeconomic equality. These cross-cultural encounters between traditions, as I explain in the conclusion, have resulted in both hybridity and a laudable leveling of the rajanical tradition in India.

⁸⁴ Ranchor Prime, Vedic Ecology: Practical Wisdom for Surviving the 21st Century (Novato, CA: Mandala, 2002).

⁸⁵ Ibid., 78–92. For an argument linking Gandhi's ecological political thought to the concept of kṣatriya (warrior and ruler), see Godrej, Farah, “Ascetics, Warriors, and a Gandhian Ecological Citizenship,” Political Theory 40, no. 4 (2012): 437–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the sake of balance, however, it should also be noted that Gandhi problematically held caste to be sacred. For example, see Perry Anderson, The Indian Ideology (London: Verso, 2013), and Arundhati Roy, “The Doctor and the Saint,” introduction to The Annihilation of Caste, by B. R. Ambedkar (London: Verso, 2014), 17–179. I thank an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this point.

⁸⁶ Prime, Vedic Ecology, 94–99.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 108–17. Importantly, Mathur's notion of dignity does not arise from a liberal framework. He does not see any fundamental ontological distinction between human beings and trees, citing how trees can offer some of the same services that humans can offer. He claims that trees offer services to both human and nonhuman beings such as plants and animals, and do it so well that trees are held up as normative exemplars of virtues such as tolerance and generosity. Drawing upon a story of Krishna that compares a tree to a humble devotee, Mathur explains: “For the Hindu, trees are to be respected as fellow living beings… . The tree lives to a great age standing upright in scorching heat, freezing cold, wind and rain, and is always prepared to give shelter to passers-by. It freely gives its fruits and flowers. Healing herbs grow among its roots. A host of creatures live in its branches. If someone cuts its limbs, it remains silent and does not complain. The tree is the very symbol of tolerance and generosity” (ibid., 111).

⁸⁸ Ibid., 118–27.

⁸⁹ Ibid., 130, 132.

⁹⁰ Arvind Kejriwal, Swaraj (Noida: HarperCollins, 2012).

⁹¹ Williams and Warren, “A Democratic Case,” 28.

⁹² Kaviraj, “On the Historicity of ‘the Political,’” 24–39.

⁹³ Such movements would include a variety of citizen advocacy groups such as “Citizens Fighting Corruption,” and nonprofit organizations such as the Public Affairs Centre (PAC).

⁹⁴ Shiva, “Let All Beings Be Happy,” in Vedic Ecology, 131.